HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE has surpassed all the records of box office collections in India held in India. NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM-2 has already put huge banners of advertisement at all the important junctions in metropolitan cities announcing its release. In such a scenario where the big corporate houses of the international variety having deep pockets trying to capture as many eyeballs as possible, and children being a decisive decision making category about viewing a film where do the films made on small budget stand. Films like SANKAT CITY and MORNING WALK that were released last week, and DEKH BHAI DEKH that is going to view for audience interests with LUCK would not be able to survive the publicity blitz of these giants. Does it mean that it would be a death knell for the small films?

Not likely, if the initiative of UTV Films is to be taken as a new beginning. In a revolutionary move UTV Films has decided that it would experiment with issuing films directly through the DTH cable channels. For the film aficionados of the serious kind, it would indeed be manna from the heaven as they would be able to see the films directly sitting at their homes by paying a nominal subscription amount of say Rs. 60-75. Who would not like to watch a new movie sitting at his home in the couch instead of going to cinema halls to see the movie?

UTV Films would initiate this process with PHIR KABHI, which it would be releasing on the DTH platform sometime in next month. With a DTH subscriber base of more than 10 million homes, even if half of them agree to view the movie then a new channel of revenue generation would be created for the film making company. It would also encourage the independent movie makers to continue with their experiment, as they would be assured about their movies reaching the target audience.

It indeed would be a new competition for the multiplexes as well, and may be they could think about coming up with a new pricing for offbeat films, so that the audience of this variety does not migrate to the DTH platform eventually. All the same, viewer is going to be benefited, and industry would also prosper by this initiative.